Plague science is a rapidly developing field, as is paleogenetics more generally. Increasingly, too, developments in climate science will likely be able to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the role of changing climatic conditions and major outbreaks of plague.

The Black Death pandemic swept through Europe during the Middle Ages leading to high mortality from plague. How it spread, the transmission of the disease within and between cities, remains a subject of controversy among scientists and historians.

During the plague’s fourteenth century outbreak, a variety of medical cures and theories existed that would baffle the modern physician, but perhaps the most striking difference between fourteenth-century medicine and modern medicine was the involvement of religion.

Are you a horror fan looking for something different to shake up your reading list? Kelly Evans might have just what you’re looking for in her latest novel, ‘The Mortecarni’, a medieval zombie mash up set around the time of the Black Death.

Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that caused Justinian’s Plague and the Black Death, was once only able to cause a mild gastrointestinal infection. However, researchers have found that a single genetic change to bacteria turned into one of the deadliest diseases in human history.

Between 541 and 543 AD, the Plague of Justinian, traditionally regarded as the first of three human plague pandemics, spread from either central Asia or Africa across the Mediterranean basin into Europe, killing an estimated 100 million people according to the contemporary scholar Procopius

A group of Norwegian and Swiss researchers have uncovered links between climatic changes in central Asia and repeated outbreaks of the Bubonic plague in Europe, starting with the Black Death in the 14th century.

It’s that time of year again – the mad scramble for the perfect Christmas gift for the historian, nerd, avid reader on your list. Here are a few suggestions for you – new releases for December and January!

The aim of this study is to present the sea and land commercial routes of the Byzantine Egypt and their role in the dissemination of the plague bacteria Yersinia pestis from the Red Sea to Mediterranean ports. The Mediterranean port of Pelusium was considered as the starting point of the first plague pandemic…

Two of the world’s deadliest pandemics – Justinian’s Plague and the Black Death – were caused by the same pathogen. These findings were revealed yesterday in an article published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The century or so from approximately 1550 to 1650 is a period during which witch-hunts reached unprecedented frequency and intensity. The circumstances that fomented the witch- hunts—persistent warfare, religious conflict, and harvest failures—had occurred before, but witch-hunts had never been so ubiquitous or severe.

Hitherto peripheral (if not outright ignored) in general medieval historiography, medieval medical history is now a vibrant subdiscipline, one that is rightly attracting more and more attention from ‘mainstream’ historians and other students of cultural history.

Recent research has shown that pre-existing health condition affected an individual ’ s risk of dying duringthe 14th-century Black Death. However, a previous study of the effect of adult stature on risk of mortality during the epidemic failed to ﬁnd a relationship between the two; this result is perhaps surprising given the well-documented inverse association between stature and mortality in human populations.

Medieval Warfare

Read about the rise and fall of the Assassins in the latest issue of Medieval Warfare. Click here to order the magazine.

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